Crying for Kharkiv

I wake, and it is true. Putin is invading Ukraine, pushing his vision of a greater Russia. The freeing of a people from their liberty. The press is also awake, and I am listening. The voices of reporters are tense but measured, as they bring me the horror of what they see and hear. The visual and verbal accounts of atrocity pervade my home. They change me. I could switch off and live my normal life, but I don't. My tears flow. My pen flows. Forty-two days of war, forty-two poems, dancing through the duration of a first phase in Putin's new war. These poems are for me, but they are also for you. Written lest we forget, lest we deny, lest we ignore. Stay with me and feel the rhythm of pain. We owe this to the people of Ukraine. They defend our notion of what is right.